Self-similar coarsening: A test of theory

Theoretical description of coarsening is of central importance to describing the kinetics of phase transformations in a wide range of materials. Through experiments on the International Space Station (ISS), the dynamics of coarsening was measured in a system that satisfies all assumptions of theory, in which the materials properties needed to compare experiment and theory are known, and has a rapid coarsening rate. The observed exponents for the temporal power laws match those predicted by theory. We find that the amplitudes of the power laws are slightly higher than predicted due to the presence of slow particle motion resulting from nonzero gravity present on the ISS. The measured particle size distributions are in agreement with those predicted by simulations. We conclude that interfacial energy driven coarsening is well described by theory and that simulations of coarsening can be used as a reliable tool for computational materials design.